Mormon girl Leesie has life figured out--until devastated Michael lands in her high school. CAYMAN SUMMER is the third novel in Michael and Leesie's romance that began with TAKEN BY STORM. My readers rallied around me—giving me the guts to release UNBROKEN CONNECTION (Book #2) independently. I launched this blog because I wanted them with me every step as I wrote CAYMAN SUMMER. I posted the novel as I wrote each scene. Now this blog is devoted to all things Michael and Leesie.

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Thursday, January 27, 2011

I can't believe we're here already. This one short poem is the entire last chapter. Don't worry. I'm writing a nice juicy Epilogue that you will all love. Look for it on Monday and Tuesday. It will be in two parts--Leesie and Michael will both get a chance to speak.

Okay, here it is. The last chapter I'll ever write about Michael and Leesie. An Epilogue just isn't the same as a chapter. But this isn't the end. And I'll be posting revisions if you want to follow that.

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

This completes Chapter 34. I'm not going to blether on because I know you're dying to get to it.

MICHAEL’S DIVE LOG – VOLUME 10

Dive Buddy: Leesie

Date:08/06

Dive #:

Location: Grand Cayman

Dive Site:

Weather Condition:

Water Condition:

Depth:

Visibility:

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Comments:

Leesie’s face, eery in the cave’s flickering light, blanches white. She hides it against my shoulder.

I bend my head and speak into her ear. “That fight you had with Phil. You never told me what it was about.”

She wraps her arms around me—too tight. I feel something damp soak through my T-shirt. Her reaction makes me want to take back the question.

I run her back and stroke her head. I don’t want to know what she’s so carefully hidden—don’t want to stain the perfect picture we’ve painted—her dad baptizing me next week, a year engaged in Provo, a wedding next August at her temple in Spokane. I don’t know if I can survive what I do know she’s going to say.

Everything’s fallen into perfect place. I want this joyful haze we’ve been walking around in to last forever. But as we sat here waiting out the storm, with hours to reflect, the tiny flaw in her story cracked open. Now I feel like I’m dangling on the edge of a deep crevice hanging on by my fingertips.

She turns her head to speak, but keeps her cheek pressed against me. “My mom said I should tell you.”

“They know?” How can I ever face them again? Every time they see me they’ll see the guy who caused their son’s death. “And they still—”

“It doesn’t change anything.”

“Freak, Leesie, it changes everything.”

She grabs a handful of my shirt. “Don’t go down that road Michael.” She sniffs and wipes her face. “You saw what it did to me.”

I can’t reply. I’m cold—inside and out. Turmoil tosses my heart against a wall, and it shatters into a million pieces.

Leesie tries to kiss me, but I pull back.

She retreats into my T-shirt. “It doesn’t change how much I love you.”Her arms tighten around me.

I can’t breathe. I try to break her grip, get up, get away. She won’t let me. I unhale and hold my breath, stop struggling.

She kisses my neck, squeezes her eyes tight a moment, then opens them up starts to speak through her tears. “I love my brother”—she swallows hard—“but it’s not your fault he’s dead. It’s not my fault, either. I didn’t undo his seatbelt. I didn’t put ice on the road. I didn’t say vile things about you.”

“You’re blaming him now?” The wind starts to blow again outside. Cecilia’s back.

“I let him get to me.”

I bend my ear towards her mouth so I can hear better.

Leesie raises her voice. “He slept while I drove up through the forest and into the mountains. I tried to figure out how I felt about Jaron, and all I could thing was you.” She touches my face. “Surrounded by all that beauty and stillness, the Spirit finally got through to me. I saw I’d misjudged you cruelly. Every mile closer to home brought me back to you. I was so happy.” She squeezes me again. “It was sacred. I should have kept it to myself. But I didn’t.” A sob stops her. She gets control and continues. “Phil drug all my sublime feelings into the gutter. I blew up. Lost control. You know the rest.”

I turn my face to the wall—trying to escape her voice.

She yells so I can hear over the roaring storm. “It’s Phil’s fault. It’s my fault. It’s ice on the road.”

I’m shaking my head, starting struggling again.

She still won’t let me go. “You had nothing to do with it.”

I look down at her. Freak, I stole her entire life—even her brother. “If you’d left me alone—”

“Suffering like that? How could I?

“Phil would be packing his bags for BYU and making out with Krystal.” The weight of that reality smacks me hard. It unlocks the dark place where the guilt I struggled with when I failed to save my mother when Isadore had us both in her clutches and stirs it up into a rampage.

I break free of Leesie’s hold, struggle to my feet. She bows her head to the ground and sobs. Part of me longs to kneel down beside her, hold her, comfort her. But the other part needs to breath. I’m suffocating in this cave.

I trip over bodies and step on fingers as I race to the entrance and stare over the sand bag wall I helped build earlier. A Cecilia fueled wave breaks against it. The spray that hits my face beckons me.

I climb over the wall and into pure wildness. Rain and waves drench me. Powerful winds drive me back. I fight them with each step forward I take. There used to be a road betweent he path that leads up to the caves and the exposed broken coral that creates the shoreline. Now all I can see is water swirling white around my ankles as the wave recedes. The wind is full of sharp shards of shell and glass, tiny sand pellets, and bits of slime that used to be palm fronds. A piece of corrugated tin torn from a roof flies by me.

I let the storm blow me to her, grab her limp body from the swirling ebb before waves suck her out with them. A wave crashes just behind us. I scramble to the cave’s mouth and over the wall before a monster attacks and drags us out with it.

I kneel by the wall, panting and praying. “Please, Heavenly Father, let her be all right.”

Her eyes don’t open.

She doesn’t touch my face and whisper, “I love you.”

I bury my face against her wet head. She’s breathing. I press my hand over her heart. It beats.

Strangers discover us—try to take her from me.

“She just hit her head.” I won’t let anyone touch her. “She’ll be all right.” I try to remember what the doctors said about her last concussion. Something about further injury. “Please, save her. Please,” I whisper.

No one asks what the hell we were doing out there. They seem afraid of me. Do I look that freaked?

I hold her close and cry. “Come on, babe. Please.” I rock her until I fall asleep.

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

We've got 53K words behind us. Just two to three thousand more to go. I don't want to finish. This journey, especially this final volume with all of you here, has been an amazing experience for me. I could revise forever and ever, but I know you want the finished book in your hands, and I need to move on with other projects. I would really love to write all my books like this! But I don't know if a publisher would go for that.

I will continue posting as I revise, so you can experience that process, and I want to have a complete polished draft available here, so if anyone can't purchase the ebook or paperback version, they can read the whole thing with all the little niceties, like chapter titles, poem titles, and filled out dive log headings, right here.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. This isn't the final chapter. But it's close.

Monday, January 24, 2011

I made it!! I didn't get a chance to write all day today--busy with family business and letting people know about a amazingly cool event I get to participate in this weekend at Changing Hands, the most wonderful bookstore in the Valley of the Sun.

If you're in the area, I'd encourage you to try to come. On Saturday, January 28th, starting at 4 PM and going until the last game is played and the final book signed, Changing Hands is hosting YAllapalooza 2011. They've got a great line-up of authors from Arizona and Utah. It's going to be great. Here's the list from their webiste:

Anyway, I thought about waiting until tomorrow to write this, but I now I would have tossed and turned all night and gotten up cranky, so I sat down and got to work.

I didn't proof this at all, so forgive all the typos! It was a tricky scene to write. Transitions are tough. Do you think this works? I don't think I've got the rhythm of the last few lines right yet. I'll work on them. I promise.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

MICHAEL’S DIVE LOG – VOLUME 10

Dive Buddy: Leesie

Date:07/26

Dive #:

Location: Grand Cayman

Dive Site:

Weather Condition:

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Visibility:

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“So, Brother Walden, would you like to seta date for your baptism?” Elder Kitchen is from northern Arizona. He was stoked when I told him I’m from Phoenix. “My I don’t know how many great grandparents pioneered in Mesa.” They went south from Salt Lake when Leesie’s dad’s ancestors went north to Idaho. Elder Kitchen punched my arm and said, “Coll. I come all the way to Grand Cayman to teach a bro from Phoenix.” He grew up in Snowflake—tiny place, mostly Mormons, up on the UT/AZ border. They have winter there. Not sure why you’d want to live in Arizona where there’ winter, but Elder Kitchen loves it—misses the place like crazy.

I look from him to his companion, Elder Quincy from Ohio, to Leesie. She’s holding her breath, turning blue at the edges.

“Breathe, babe.” I reach for her hand. “You think I’m ready?”

Elder Quincy, who has only been a member for a couple years—and one of those was spent on his mission, rolls his eyes. “Dude, you’re a lot more ready than I was.” His family cut him off when he got baptized, but his ward (ie. Mormon congregation) back in Ohio is paying for his mission.

Leesie sets our hands on her knee and places her left hand on top. Her ring catches the sun that streams in behind us. “The question is—do you think you’re ready?”

After the fourth of July holidayers left, business really slacked off out at East End. It’s not as dead as it will be in August when hurricane season starts to heat up, but I’ve only been working one dive day—sometimes not even that. Gabriel can instruct, too. He’s been taking all the students—training Alex. They want to buy a place, maybe over on Cayman Brac, and go into business together.

I’m the only guy the elders are teaching. They’d much rather teaching me and eat free fish than pound on doors ortry to talk to people on buses or the streets. Beach missionary work is against the rules.So we’ve spent hours every day this month, except Mondays when they get a day to do laundry, write emails home, and play basketball and on their community service days, running the fans full blast on Aunty Jaz’s back porch trying not to melt without A/C and talking about Joseph Smith, Jesus Christ, Heavenly Father and what He’s got planned for me.

I close my eyes and look inside. Am I ready? Can I ever be ready? My eyes drift open. “I’m not done reading the Book of Mormon.”

Leesie pats my hand. “You’re close.”

Elder Kitchen leans forward with his hands clasped, his eyes serious. “Have you prayed about it?”

I swallow and look at Leesie. Her eyes are on my face. I whisper, “Yes. I do.” Those three words bring a powerful surge of warmth, a feeling I’ve come to crave.

A grin grows on both elders’ faces. Elder Kitchen sits up. “Then let’s set a date. When are you leaving?”

Leesie and I are lost in each other. Elder K’s questions doesn’t register. Happiness makes Leesie glow. Joyful. That’s what she is. I know it sounds corny, but that fills me up, too.

Elder Quincy clears his throat. “Are we in the way here?”

Leesie gets pink and turns to them. “We’re leaving the tenth of August.”

It was going to be sooner, but Gabriel and Alex are going to Cayman Brac t o look at a dive operation that might be up for sale soon and convinced us to go along. Gabriel and I are staying with a friend of his who works on the Brac. The resort is comping Alex and Leesie a room. Leesie made Alex promise Gabriel would not be allowed in that room before she agreed to go.

Leesie’s parents were disappointed at the delay, but they were cool about it. Her dad has been cool about everything.

I put my right hand on tops of Leesie’s to complete the stack on her knee. “Do you think Leesie’s dad could baptize me?”

Leesie leans her head onto my shoulder. “He’d love, too. Call him.”

Elder Quincy’s face falls. “Oh, man. We wanted to dunk you.”

Elder Kitchen elbows him. “It’s okay, Elder. We’ll survive.”

I realize what they’re saying. If I wait until we go home, these guys who I’ve come to love like brothers, can’t be there. “I could fly them all here. Leesie’s family and Gram. I want her to be here—to feel this.” I put my hand on my heart.

Leesie lifts her head. “It’s getting close to harvest.” Her voice wobbles. “Dad can’t leave the farm.” I can tell she’s thinking that he’ll be doing it alone this year. No Phil to help. She turns to me. “I’d like to drive truck fro him while we’re there.”

“Whatever you want, babe.”

Edler Quincy stands up and puts his hands on his hips. “You cal him then and set the date. We’re not leaving until you do.”

Elder Kitchen stands, too. “We want a wedding invitation, okay?”

Leesie releases my left hand, pulls her phone out of her pocket, taps “home” on her favorites. “Hey, mom. Is dad around? Michael wants to ask him something important.” She listens to her mom’s reply and hands me the phone.

I walk over to the far side of the porch, wait for Leesie’s dad to pick up, keep my back to Leesie and the elders. What am I doing? A voice that’s been gnawing at me for about a week now takes over my brain. I’m not religious. Never have been. Like my parents. We believe in diving. That’s it. How do I know these feelings and thoughts I think are from God are real? Maybe it’s all just crazy Mormon voodoo.

“Hello? Michael?”

The sounds of his voice brings me back to my purpose. “Hello, Bro. Hunt.”

“What did you want to ask me?” He doesn’t happy. There’s strain and sadness in his voice. Grief. How long did I sound like that? I think I still do sometimes. Maybe I always will. He probably thinks I’m calling to ask if I can marry Leesie. Does that make him sadder?

I close my eyes and rest my forehead against the porch post. “Would you baptize me?” My throat is dry. I croak the words.

“What?”

“When Leesie and I are back in August—will you baptize me?”

His reply shuts that gnawing voice up. “Of course, I will, son. Of course, I will.”